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Comment by guptaneil | Hacker News Reader

I already thought editing titles was uncalled for, so seeing them edit links seems way over the line. Without any explanation, we can only guess at what the reasoning behind such edits are.

However, if mods are going to continue such aggressive edits, it would be really nice if they had to write a quick reason/summary of the edit, or at least show what changed. Since I doubt that will happen, I wish PG would at least add an "edited" label to stories that have been changed.

As things stand now, I no longer know which stories are actually community-approved and which have been silently placed there by the powers that be.

EDIT: Interesting that this thread is suddenly at the bottom of the page...

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HN exists to serve PG and YC's goals. Plain and simple. And for all we know there may be a pay-to-play relationship between YC and TC.

Which is fine, but then that should be disclosed, not because they have to, but out of good faith. Most of the tech community, myself included, has high regards for PG and YC. If secret pay-to-play relationships exist, they erode that trust.

To be clear, I don't think that there are pay-to-play relationships between YC and TC, at least not any that would lead them to actively edit HN submissions to be from TC. However, a secret group of mods are leaving a bad taste in my mouth. I hope PG will take this opportunity to clear up exactly what the mods' roles are, and what permissions/oversight they have.

This thread has, without doubt, been pinned to the bottom ( it was sitting at the top a couple of hours ago and has received as many votes since then).

Editing the title is one thing (which I largely condone), editing a URL is another thing entirely and then to blatantly attempt to hide the discussion is boardering on outrageous! The HN "mod community" has gone well down in my estimations.

I thought for a long time that TC was paying YC for flow (always suspicious that of all the articles on a given topic, it's always the TC ones that make it to the top of the front page), and the actions of this story convinced me that there is truth to the claim.

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